Important Information about Techniques

See Understanding Techniques for WCAG Success Criteria for important information about the usage of these informative techniques and how they relate to the normative WCAG 2.0 success criteria. The Applicability section explains the scope of the technique, and the presence of techniques for a specific technology does not imply that the technology can be used in all situations to create content that meets WCAG 2.0.

User Agent and Assistive Technology Support Notes

Description

Before graphics became widely used on the internet, ASCII characters were often arranged to form pictures or graphs. Although ASCII art is not used frequently on the Web anymore, it must be remembered that, when it is used, it is very confusing to people who are blind and accessing the internet using screen readers. If it is used it should also have a text explanation of what the picture is. It is also suggested that there be a link to skip over the ASCII art (although this is not required).

Emoticons are very popular. They include ASCII characters that form facial expressions and other ways to communicate an emotion. They can be confusing for screen reader users. When possible it is better simply to use a word like "smile" instead of an emoticon. But if emoticons are used they should have a text alternative. In some contexts, blog and forum software for example, plug-ins are available that automatically convert ASCII characters used as emoticons into HTML images with text alternatives.

Leetspeak uses various combinations of ASCII characters to replace Latinate letters. Leet has become a part of Internet culture and slang. Leet is frequently used to beat text and spam filters. It is often incomprehensible to blind people using screen readers, and therefore requires a text alternative in order to conform to Success Criteria 1.1.1.

Note: Because support for this technique is limited, it is recommended that authors provide the text alternative in text.

Examples

Example 1

The following shows three options for providing alternatives for an emoticon representing "fright," which is made out of an equal sign followed by the number eight, a hyphen and the number zero.

Example 3

Tests

Procedure

Check to see that the content contains ASCII art, emoticons and/or leetspeak.

Check that there is a text alternative immediately before or after all ASCII art, emoticons and/or Leetspeak.

Expected Results

Test procedure #3 is true.

If this is a sufficient technique for a success criterion, failing this test procedure does not necessarily mean that the success criterion has not been satisfied in some other way, only that this technique has not been successfully implemented and can not be used to claim conformance.